I am a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University where I work with the Technology Policy Program. I cover technology, media, Internet, and free speech policy issues with a particular focus in online child safety and digital privacy policy issues.
I have spent two decades in the public policy research community. I previously served as the President of The Progress & Freedom Foundation, the Director of Telecommunications Studies at the Cato Institute, a Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation as a Fellow in Economic Policy, and a researcher at the Adam Smith Institute in London.
I am the author or editor of seven books on diverse topics such as media regulation and child safety issues, mass media regulation, Internet governance and jurisdiction, intellectual property, regulation of network industries, and the role of federalism within high-technology markets. I earned a B.A. in journalism and political science at Indiana University, and received a M.A. in international business management and trade theory at the University of Maryland.
I also blog regularly at the Technology Liberation Front (http://techliberation.com) and can be found on Twitter at: @AdamThierer

Sunsetting Technology Regulation: Applying Moore's Law to Washington

There are many laws governing America’s information technology marketplace, and many more are proposed each day. When layers of unnecessary and inefficient red tape bind the communications, media, and Internet sectors, it stifles innovation, investment, and the global competitiveness of our tech industries. Consumers are harmed by such excessive regulation because it limits choice and discourages new forms of innovation and competition.

Reforming or rescinding misguided regulation is never easy, but to the extent that there is one quick fix to the problem it comes down to sunsetting high-tech rules on a regular timetable.

Keep in mind, the most important law that governs today’s tech sector wasn’t implemented by Washington policymakers. In fact, it wasn’t enacted at all. It’s “Moore’s Law,” the principle named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore who first observed that, generally speaking, the processing power of computers doubles roughly every 18 months while prices remain fairly constant.

Moore’s Law has been a relentless regulator of markets and has helped keep the power of “tech titans” in check better than any Beltway regulator ever could. As I’ve documented in this column before, we now live in Joseph Schumpeter’s economy. Cascading waves of continuous change, or what Schumpeter called the “perennial gales of creative destruction,” reverberate all around us in the tech economy. Innovative risk-takers are constantly shaking things up and displacing yesterday’s lumbering, lethargic giants.

In markets built largely upon binary code and governed by Moore’s Law, the pace and nature of change has become hyper-Schumpeterian: unrelenting and utterly unpredictable. Just ask some of the players that have been largely left in the dust, including AOL, AltaVista, MySpace, Palm, and others.

Analog era laws are also struggling to keep up with this turbulent change, and new proposals don’t fare much better. “Emerging technologies change at the speed of Moore’s Law, leaving statutes that try to define them by their technical features quickly out of date,” observes fellow Forbes contributor Larry Downes in his excellent book, The Laws of Disruption. But that doesn’t stop well-intentioned policymakers from trying. “Lawmakers have also too often heeded the siren call to do something, anything, to prove that digital life is not a lawless frontier,” Downes notes. “But legislating ahead of the technology helps no one and often leaves behind rules that trap those who were doing nothing wrong.”

Once we recognize the power of Moore’s Law to naturally regulate markets—and the corresponding danger of leaving Washington’s laws on the books too long—it should be clear why it is essential to align America’s legal and regulatory policies with the realities of modern tech markets.

One way policymakers could do so is by applying Moore’s Law to all current and future laws and regulations through two simple principles:

Principle #1 – Every new technology proposal should include a provision sunsetting the law or regulation 18 months after enactment. Policymakers can always reenact the rule if they believe it is still sensible.

Principle #2 – Reopen all existing technology laws and regulations and reassess their worth. If no compelling reason for their continued existence can be identified and substantiated, those laws or rules should be repealed within 18 months. If a rationale for continuing existing laws and regs can be identified, the rule can be re-implemented and Principle #1 applied to it.

What should be the test for determining when technology laws and regulations are retained? That bar should be fairly high. Conjectural harms and boogeyman scenarios can’t be used in defense of new rules or the reenactment of old ones. Policymakers must conduct a robust cost-benefit analysis of all tech rules and then offer a clear showing of tangible harm or actual market failure before enactment or reenactment of any policy.

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